The Beyond (2010)

Simply A Masterpiece

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The Beyond, like most horror films that came out between 1978 and 1992, spends most of its time revealing in a shower of blood. Each attack, each death feels like an attempt to not only upstage any previous bloodletting, but an endeavor to find new, creative ways to kill its cast (dogs and spiders going a long way). What The Beyond is crippled by, however, is a completely incomprehensible plot, even by horror standards. To avoid spoilers (for there is still fun to be had with this film), all the audience needs to know is this: ignore following the story. The headache it will induce is far more frightening than the film. There are hotels, zombies, possessions, and gateways to Hell, to count a few obvious turns, but none of it connects very well, and a film like The Beyond is more concerned with the bloodshed than how it gets to the moments of murder.See, I heard about this film from a book I've had for years, "Lurker in the Lobby," by Andrew Migliore and John Strysik, about films featuring either direct, or obvious, H.P. Lovecraft influences. As an avid fan of Lovecraft's I thought I would give this film a look (and to Migliore's and Strysik's credit, they too warned the story was a horror all its own). As a fan of Lovecraft inspired horror, this film still had some merit, and was enjoyable from that view. Sure, it's not entirely cosmic horror (the ending, perhaps, comes closest to being cosmic), but there are enough nods to Lovecraftian tropes that it worked. Would I watch The Beyond again? Not likely, but for the brief hour and nearly a half I was mildly entertained. The Beyond works as a quick Saturday afternoon flick if you are a Lovecraft fan who doesn't mind ignoring a film's story, and not much else.

I saw this first on a VHS in the late 80s titled as Seven doors of death. The VHS guy told me that it was a rare copy. Revisited recently on a blu ray. The film may be frustrating to some viewers because it does not follow a linear path. The movie starts in 1927 Louisiana hotel where v get to see an angry mob, some arriving in boats while others in cars. Yeehaw! They torture n kill a painter, crucifying him on the wall. The blood which comes out from his hand resembles dirty muddy water. Fast forward, a girl from New York inherits this hotel n she starts renovation. How she inherits this hotel no explanation given. A painter falls off after he sees a girl with the creepiest contact lenses. Later we see the new owner of the hotel driving on a seemingly endless bridge to nowhere n the same creepy lenses blind girl standing with her dog on the bridge. A plumber goes to repair the mysterious flooding in the basement n there is the most nastiest eye popping scene. Later the bodies of the plumber n the painter (who's now a decayed n dead zombie) r moved to the morgue where the doc puts ECG machine on the zombie. Crazy science! The painters wife comes to dress the body for funeral n she sees something which we don't get to see n she screams n v get to c an open jar of acid (who keeps an open jar of acid) kept on top of a shelf which is shaking n slowly the acid is dropping on the mothers face, while the daughter who entered hearing the scream tries to escape the acidic froth which goes on like a wave. Cut back to the funeral n we get to see the daughter of the plumber too turned blind with similar creepy lenses. A contractor goes to the city hall to retrieve some old plans of the hotel n he falls down the ladder n is attacked by tarantulas n they do eat his eyeballs. Whats the eyeball obsession? Now the original blind girl who's been dismissed as a ghost or someone who doesn't exist, is attacked by her dog. Who was she is never explained. Do we care? Nope. In the end v get to c hordes of slow walking zombies. The doc keeps on firing, sometimes on the head n sometimes on other body parts. Maybe his aim wasn't that good or else how can he not know about shooting the zombies on the head. The best part is that without reloading the gun, he keeps on firing. One very good scene of a head-shot. Superb effects there. The ending is done surprisingly well and offers a nice little final touch of horror. The doc n the owner r trapped in the painting. Technically, Salvati did a good job with the cinematography. Germano Natali did some stunning special effects. All in all the director Lucio fulci did a terrific job with the lil resources he had to work with.

I go to a lot of horror conventions and I frequent a lot of horror message boards. I find in my conversations there that most horror geeks go through a typical exploration. You start with the big budget Hollywood horror that was readily available and as your tastes grow more, you start delving deeper into the horror underground. Inevitably, for most horror fans you exhaust the domestic classics and start digging into the foreign films, which brings us to Italian horror and, more specifically, Lucio Fulci.Let's just establish quickly that his films are either going to be appreciated or hated and there is little middle ground. I will admit that it took me a few runs through Italian horror films until I started to "get it" more and appreciate them. Accept right off the bat that you are throwing plot and logic out the window to appreciate imagery. Fulci believed strongly that the best horror should elicit a strong response in the audience and spur them to a feeling or action. It did not have to be a "good story". If you can't get past the fact that the movie doesn't always make good sense, then don't bother. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong because it's perfectly logical to want a good plot in a movie. On the other hand, art doesn't always have to make sense. The art of Jackson Pollock doesn't portray life in the same way as a Reubens portrait might, but that doesn't mean they aren't both valid art.So, with the caveats out of the way, let's talk about the movie. To me, ZOMBIE will always be Fulci's masterpiece and is in my top 50 horror films. This movie is easily his next best. The story revolves around a hotel built on one of the gates to hell, which naturally causes some strange occurrences on the grounds. It's hard to give you more plot than that because...well..there isn't much more. What the movie can provide, though, is good atmosphere and some awesome visual effects.The tone of the movie is consistently creepy. Originally intended to be a haunted house flick, but altered some to make the producers happy, the movie still adheres well to the haunted house feel. From the beginning scenes, there is something unsettling about the house and the events going on and Fulci plays this well by injecting a surreal feeling into things so that it truly feels like a nightmare.The deaths are what you're paying admission for, though. There are some great visual effects here. Gallons of spurting blood, ripping flesh, melting faces, spiders tearing chunks off people. For gorehounds there is a lot of fun to be had here and that's what draws me into this movie the most.Fulci's movies always walk a thin line between surreal and ridiculous. The first time I encountered this movie I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it, but as I've seen it a few more times I've really grown an appreciation for the movie. Set aside your preconceived notions about plot (who needs it) and just enjoy the ride for what it is, a bloody, disgusting, thrill.

The Beyond is the middle chapter of Fulci's 'Death' trilogy (AKA 'Gates of Hell' trilogy). As I started watching this, I knew what to expect: Gallons of gore, lack of a coherent plot and a deeply cynical, downbeat tone. The movie is pretty much this and a wee bit more. What I didn't expect to see was a stunningly good cold open. Shot in rich sepia tone and with dazzling visual artistry, the scene showed Fulci could be every bit as artistic and flashy as Argento and Bava if he wanted to.Unfortunately, the movie went off the deep end with a lot of meandering punctuated with some brutal gore sequences. Fulci really likes to show us close-ups of his gore effects. During a scene of tarantulas biting off a man's face, I could almost taste the latex and fake blood. That said, the movie picks up during the last 15 minutes with a well-shot (pun unintended) zombie action sequence ultimately concluding with a brilliant display of the hell/purgatory/whatever-the-hell-it-was.MacColl is better here than in City of the Living Dead primarily because she is given more stuff to do. The male lead, David Warbeck lacks the class of Christopher George but makes up for it by looking the part of a doctor who is a crack-shot with a handgun. It was disappointing to not see Daniela Doria or Giovanni Lombardo Radice turn up after their wacky antics in City. Though we do get Mater Tenebrarum in an appropriately creepy role.Ultimately, at least to me, The Beyond, while watchable, is not the magnum opus of Dr. Lucio Fulci. Ah if only if the rest of the movie had been as good as the beginning...